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Thanks to a five-year, $25 million grant, the largest given to the University of Kansas by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), several campus research projects have been funded to promote research development in high priority areas.

Of the four main types of Leukemia, Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML) diagnoses make up nearly one-third of new leukemia cases and is most likely to occur in adults. Although common cancer treatment methods are used for AML patients, only about half go into remission after chemotherapy treatments. Factors such as age and overall health contribute to these remission rates. Researchers at top life science institutions around the world continually study AML to gain better understandings of the biology of this cancer that can lead to new and more effect treatment methods. (Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons)

According to the National Cancer Institute (NCI) there are over 380,000 people living with leukemia in the United States. Each year roughly 24,500 people die from the disease and over 62,000 new cases are diagnosed. To improve treatment options for leukemia patients, the NCI recently awarded John DiPersio, MD, PhD of Washington University, St. Louis $6 million in research funding. The Professor of Medicine in Oncology at the university’s School of Medicine will use the seven years of funding to support three major areas of leukemia research in his lab. These include: improving the effectiveness of standard chemotherapy, preventing graft-versus-host disease, and developing new immunotherapies.

Acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) is the most common type of childhood cancer, affecting nearly 6 thousand children in the US annually. Recently, a possible relationship has been identified, which may provide valuable insight into why this cancer develops and how to prevent it.

Cancer affects the majority of the population in one way or another, through knowing someone with cancer, being exposed to it in the media, or having it oneself. Cancer treatments and cures are some of the most well funded and highly researched areas in the life sciences. Researchers at the Winshop Cancer Institute at Emory University in Atlanta, GA recently discovered that an orange pigment, called parietin or physcion, that is found in lichens and rhubarb has potential to be used as an anti-cancer drug.

When life gives you lemons, make lemonade… and if you’ve got lemonade, make a lemonade stand. However, when Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation gives you millions in research funding, now you can help cure childhood cancer. Thanks to a little girl who once made lemonade to raise money for childhood cancer research, two UC San Francisco faculty members are among researchers being nationally acknowledged for their work in pediatric oncology.

Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center cell engineering researchers and their clinician colleagues have been in the news recently for a successful experimental cell therapy. Called targeted immunotherapy, a patient's T cells are genetically altered in the lab, then reintroduced with the directive to target and kill cancer cells. The treatment was carried out on a group of adults who all suffered from a rapidly progressing form of leukemia that had not responded to chemotherapy. All five went into remission after the novel cell treatment, and three have stayed that way for a number of months. Results of the ongoing clinical trial appeared in the March 20 online edition of the journal Science Translational Medicine, along with an article in the New York Times.